Cyra felt as if she'd only just closed her eyes when drops of water, falling on her face, woke her up again. She grimaced when she checked the chronometer and realized it really had been a little over two and a half hours since she'd gone to sleep. It would be time to move out soon. It was still dark and thanks to Horizon's unusually long day it would be at least another eight hours until dawn. She closed the visor, looking around the camp for a moment. It was raining quite heavily, she saw. The trees held off some of it but there was enough coming through the canopy above them, that the ground was slippery when she rose with a groan. Her body, especially her legs felt so stiff, that she wondered if her joints had begun to rust.
She leaned against a tree and shook her legs alternately, trying to get the circulation going again. Marlowe was still asleep a few meters away, nestled between two large roots of the tree, snoring softly. Cyra smirked. From where she stood it almost looked like he was hugging the tree in his sleep. She decided not to wake him just yet and, instead, walked towards the elevation, where Haggard and Sweetwater were standing guard. The feeling in her legs slightly improved with every step and by the time she reached the privates, she felt a little better overall. A little.
"Morning Lieutenant." The tech said in a low voice when he saw her approach.
"Hah, fine morning this is." Haggard grumbled snidely. "Hey LT."
"Anything out of the ordinary happened?" The young asari asked, after she'd returned the greetings.
"A whole squadron of these oversized fireflys, you warned us about, came pretty close. Other than that nothing, ma'am" The demo-expert replied with a grin. "Freaked Sweets out pretty good."
"Oh bullshit!" The tech protested, a little too loudly for Cyra's taste, but she let it go this time. "Pay no attention to this yank, Lieutenant. I just said we should keep our distance and not disturb them, is all."
Cyra almost asked, what the hell a yank was, but then simply shrugged it off as 'probably unimportant right now'. She did make a mental note to ask about it later however.
"Hah, yeah of course." Haggard snorted, his grin broadening. "Whatever you say, Sweets."
"Anyway." The asari maiden interjected before Sweetwater could give an answer to that. "We'll move out soon, so be ready. How's your food situation?"
"Got one bar left." The demo-expert growled, unable to keep himself from grimacing in disgust. "But to call this stuff 'food' is kinda pushing it if you ask me."
"Same here." Sweetwater said. "And yeah calling those rations food is kinda bold. It's more a 'means to keep you going' or something like that. I mean in my opinion..."
"I get it, thank you private." Cyra cut him off. "Once we get off this rock, feel free to complain about it to alliance high command. For now I'm afraid it's all we got." She paused for a moment. "Is there anything else?"
"No ma'am." They both replied at the same time.
"Okay then, as I said get ready to move." She said, turning around.
"In your opinion what?" She heard Haggard ask in a low voice as she walked away.
"Hm?"
"Before the Lieutenant interrupted you, you said: 'In my opinion...'"
"Oh that. Well you see..."
Cyra couldn't hear the rest of the conversation. Despite the mess they found themselves in, the young asari chuckled with a slight shake of her head. Both, Haggard and Sweetwater weren't really special forces types. Their competence in their fields was clear and the last couple of days had showed they could more than hold their own in a firefight. But they were a very different kind than the few men and women that made it through N7 training with her. Those had been very quiet and very focused during their training missions. The privates were neither very quiet, nor seemed they very focused. At least not outwardly. Cyra knew enough to know, that there was obviously more to those two than met the eye. If they were just the shallow loud-mouths they seemed to be they would never have made it this far. The young asari smiled. If nothing else the two privates did a good job, lightening the mood. She could use it.
As Cyra walked over to Murphy she saw that his omni-tool was still activated. Most likely he was still studying the flight recorder data. McCoy was lying on her side next to the flight lieutenant, curled up in her sleep as much as her armor would allow.
"Hey Murph." She whispered as she knelt down next to the pilot. "How's the leg?"
He flinched as if he'd only just now noticed her approach, taking his eyes away from the holo-screen he blinked, trying to make something in what little light the omni-tool provided.
"Hurts." He said with a shrug. "It's not too bad really." He hesitated for a heartbeat. "At least not considering I may lose it." He finished with a grimace.
Cyra's eyes widened considerably as she opened the visor to look the pilot in the eyes, forgetting it was still dark for a moment. "McCoy told you that?"
The pilot frowned. "Come on Shepard I am not a fool, okay?" He growled. "No she didn't tell me anything but she really didn't have to. I mean she takes off right after you checked on me and then comes back desperately trying to pretend, everything is all right? I can read people pretty well, Shepard, and I can put two and two together, thank you very much."
The was a brief, awkward silence as Cyra didn't know what to say.
"I don't want to be a Starship helmsman." Murphy finally whispered so softly she could barely hear him.
"What do you mean?" She was almost afraid to ask.
He sighed heavily. "There's a paragraph somewhere in the alliance regs, saying you're not allowed to pilot fighters or gunships with an artificial limb. Don't ask me why. I have no idea."
"I see." The young asari said lamely, cursing herself that she couldn't think of anything more appropriate to say.
"Really?" He asked, closing his eyes for a second. "You know, I wanted to become a fighter pilot since I was a little boy but I couldn't make the cut, wasn't good enough I guess. So I worked my ass off to make it as a gunship jockey instead and I thought 'heck this is almost as good'. With an artificial leg, however, the only thing I'll be able to do is to fly a clumsy starship or a shuttle. If I am lucky that is." His voice dropped to a whisper again as he seemed to shudder at the prospect. Cyra saw his jaw tighten before he hastily turned his head away, fighting to maintain his composure.
She cleared her throat, rising with renewed determination. "Don't you worry about your leg, Murph." She said walking around the stretcher. "We'll get you to a hospital in time."
She grabbed the medic's shoulder, shaking the human woman vigorously "McCoy wake up! It's time to move."
As McCoy slowly rose, rubbing her eyes and yawning widely, Cyra was already on her way to wake Marlowe, covering the distance with a purposeful stride. She had meant to ask the pilot if he'd found anything in the flight recorder data, but this could wait. It was time to pick up the pace.
At the same time Bravo team got ready to get moving again a man walked through a dimly lit road in a run down district of Horizon's capital. This part of the city was more or less a leftover from the early days of colonization with a lot of prefabs mixed in between regular building. Everyone who could afford it had left for more modern districts long ago. There were no security cameras, no police patrols here, leaving small time criminal gangs in control.
Some of the local hoodlums were still hanging around , even at this late hour, the man noticed, surveying his surroundings with low-light goggles. None of them dared to approach the lone figure however for he moved with the grace and confidence of a trained professional and if one looked closely enough one could see the shimmer of a light armor suit underneath the long, dark mantle he was wearing. He let his gaze wander around the neighborhood one last time, before he entered a small building at the end of the road, taking off the goggles once inside to let a highly sophisticated retinal scanner do its work. He was pleased to see the others were already there, as he finally stepped inside after the security check.
He went by the name of Henry Jones. It was not his real name, of course. During the last two decades he'd changed identities dozens of times and once this assignment was over Henry Jones would cease to exist, passing into oblivion like all the other aliases before.
As his own identity was a mystery to the other two men waiting in the room, so were theirs' a mystery to him. The taller one of them was called Vitaly Petrow and pretty much the only thing Jones knew of the man was that he was a ex-N7 trooper, recruited for Alliance Intelligence after being dishonorably discharged from the alliance forces. He knew even less of the other one, known as Bert Manowski. It was unimportant who they were anyway. All he needed to know was that they, like himself were members of AI black ops division and they would carry out their assigned task by any means necessary.
"Evening Gentlemen." He said, not bothering to take off his mantle as he sat down at the small table in the middle of the room. He took two data pads out of one of the pouches of the mantle and gave one each to the other men, as they returned his greetings with a nod.
"As you know we got new orders." He said as Petrow and Manowki activated the pads. "Those are members of an alliance special forces team that crashed somewhere in the northern forest about twenty hours ago."
He gave them a moment to look at the dossiers of the people in question. They didn't ask, what an alliance spec ops team was doing on Horizon. One of the most important lessons, when working as a secret agent was not to ask too many questions.
Manowski let out an surprised whistle. "Shepard? Is that..."
"The daughter of the big man himself." Jones confirmed.
"And we're supposed to smuggle them off world?" Petrow asked, studying the profiles of the soldiers more closely.
"On the contrary, we're to prevent them from leaving Horizon ever again."
"What?" The men's heads came up instantly.
"You heard me correctly." Jones said with a nod. "It would seem one of the troopers, Private Sweetwater I believe, illegally downloaded highly classified information that could be devastating to the alliance if they got out and..."
"And it was decided to have the whole team eliminated because of that one guy?" Manowski finished the sentence. "Lovely."
"We don't know, what the Private intends to do with the data. Whether he wants to sell it to the highest bidder or something like that. We don't know if the others are in on it either." He gave each of the men a brief look. "You know as well as I do, the people in charge tend to live according to the maxim: better safe than sorry." Jones eyed the other man with a frown. "You have a problem with that?"
Manowski smiled thinly. "Of course not."
There was a brief silence as all three of them mulled over the possible consequences of their new task.
"Anyway, we can't just eliminate them." Jones finally continued. "We need to know if anyone else on their ship knows anything about the data, if it already got distributed and if so to whom. We need to capture and interrogate them."
"It's getting better all the time." Petrow growled. "The three of us are supposed to capture a special forces team alive?" He held up his data pad. "How the hell are we going to find them anyway?"
"They will want to leave the planet and the only way to do that is Discovery Space-port, so we know where they are headed." Jones replied calmly. "Besides we won't have to capture them by ourselves. We got the funds to hire some local assistance. I believe the criminal gangs in this part of town will gladly do the leg work for us if the pay is good, don't you think?"
"Hmm yeah, okay." Petrow said thoughtfully. "But I still don't like it." He pointed at his pad. "If the Lieutenant's old man finds out about this, we're dead men walking."
"No one asked you to like anything, Petrow." The senior agent said coolly. "And he will never know, if we do the job right. Now listen up. This is what we'll do..."
'Me and my big mouth!' Cyra thought, her breathing heavy, as she knelt down behind a bush, looking at the research outpost. 'Don't worry about your leg Murph, we'll get you to a hospital in time. Halle-fucking-lujah!' Trying to reach the base before dawn, Haggard, Sweetwater and herself had ran the last couple of klicks, leaving the rest of the team behind to pick them up later. Her legs felt as if they were about to fall off and the two men looked just as exhausted. 'Goddess, please let there be a vehicle here' The young asari thought as the tech let his recon drone fly around the prefab buildings.
"Looks like the egg-heads are still asleep." He reported after a few minutes. "No movement at all. No Vehicle out in the open but possibly in one of the buildings. No security systems to speak of." He finished, giving the drone the return command.
"Right. Get us there, Private. Let's move." She ordered, forcing herself to stand up. The men also rose, groans and mumbled obscenities included. With about the same enthusiasm as a child on the way to school they slowly moved towards the base, Sweetwater up front, herself in the middle and Haggard covering the rear. The sky was fairly bright now, she noticed as she switched of her helmet's night vision systems. She figured it was, at most, another half an hour until sunrise. There was no fence, or anything, around the outpost, she noticed as they got closer. Obviously the people here didn't worry about unwanted guests.
Sweetwater started to work on the door immediately after they'd reached the target building. The military grade omni-tool required only a few seconds to burn through the feeble security systems. Haggard let out a surprised whistle as the large door opened, revealing a six-wheeled vehicle.
"Hey, that looks almost like an old Mako." He exclaimed and started to walk around the armored car.
"I think it is a Mako, without the gun turret that is." The tech agreed. "Didn't expect to find one of those here." The privates immediately began to discuss their discovery in excitement.
Cyra was far less enthusiastic than the men, looking at the vehicle. It certainly did look like one of those legendary APCs and while she felt relived that they'd really found a means of transportation, she had no idea how to drive one of these. Then there was the problem of getting it running.
"Hey." She interrupted the raving men. "Remember where we are." She growled.
She looked at the beaten up vehicle a little more closely. "Any one of you has any idea, how to drive this thing?"
"I do!" Haggard replied at once, a little too eagerly for her taste.
"You do? You've driven a Mako before?"
"Well not directly no." The demo-expert admitted reluctantly. "But I've driven wheeled cars quite a lot before I enlisted."
"I see." She gave it some thought. "All right Hags get in there and see if you can get it running. And hurry, I'd like to be gone before someone of the base personnel stumbles in here."
"Right away." Haggard grinned broadly.
It took him a moment to figure out, how to open the main hatch. Cyra heard him rummaging around inside as she impatiently stepped from one foot to the other. There were a few muffled curses and then the Private climbed out again.
"Sweets, get in there." He said in disgust. "The on-board computer is password protected." He jumped down the side of the Mako and helped his team-mate to get up.
"What's taking so long?" Haggard demanded, when the problem wasn't solved a few minutes later.
Sweetwater stuck his head out of the hatch. "It's an old system damn it! I'm not used to dealing with antiquities like this okay? A little more patience please. I'm doing the best I can."
"How about doin' your best a little faster?" Haggard said scornfully. "We ain't got all day."
"Whatever!" The tech growled and got back to work.
Several minutes passed. "Come on Sweets." The demo-expert moaned. "The whole base is gona..."
"Quiet!" Cyra snarled although she could barely keep her own impatience in check. "Let him work!"
The young asari walked to the front door and risked a glance outside. There was still no one around in the part of the base she could see into. She was just turning around when a small door on the other side of the building opened with a hiss and a young human male entered, whistling a popular tune. He froze when he saw the armored soldiers.
"Who the hell..." He couldn't finish the sentence.
Despite his fatigue, Haggard reacted at once. He covered the distance between the two of them with a short sprint and slammed the butt of his gun against the man's jaw. The young human fell against the wall in his back and hit the ground, unconscious. The demo-expert switched on his shotgun's power systems, aiming a the man's head.
"Haggard!" Cyra's voice cracked like a whip. "Put the gun down!" She yelled, forgetting for a moment that somebody might hear her as she ran up to the Private.
"We can't just leave him here." Haggard protested as the shoved his gun down. "If he tells his friends about us, we're in deep shit."
"And what the hell do you think his friends are going to do if they discover a headless corpse and the Mako missing?" Cyra demanded testily. "Wouldn't take a genius to figure out what happened in here, would it?"
Haggard reluctantly switched off his shotgun. He had to admit the asari had a point. "Maybe not." He growled. "Still, we can't leave him here."
"No we can't." Cyra said, racking her brain for a possible solution. The safest thing would be to take the young human into the forest and break his neck, but she didn't want to kill the man simply because he'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. After all he had nothing to do with this whole, vile business, the team found itself in.
"We'll take him with us." She decided after a minute of thinking. "The doc can give him a sedative to keep him asleep until we're gone. With a little luck, people will think he took the car for a joyride or something like that."
She could see from the look on Haggard's face that he wasn't fully satisfied with the plan, but he said nothing. Instead he shrugged and picked up the limp body. Cyra watched him drag the man over to the Mako when she suddenly realized, the vehicle was humming softly. Sweetwater emerged from the hatch a moment later, triumphant smile and all.
"Up and running, Ladies and Gentlemen!" He said with a exaggerated gesture.
"'Bout time!" Haggard rumbled, not the least bit impressed. "Now help me, getting this guy inside, will ya?"
"Who the hell is that?" The tech raised his eyebrows in astonishment. He'd been so focused to power up the Mako, that he'd been completely oblivious to what had happened outside.
"Later, Private." The asari maiden said, helping Haggard to lift up the human. "Let's get going."
They were able to get the unconscious inside the vehicle fairly easily, thanks to Horizon's below standard gravity. Haggard slipped into the driver's seat, grinning broadly. After giving Sweetwater the order to watch their 'prisoner', Cyra took a seat in the small, transparent cupola that replaced the gun turret.
"Okay, let's move." She said, uploading the meeting point coordinates to the board computer. "Whenever you're ready, Private."
"Right. Hold on." Nothing happened.
"Is something wrong?" She inquired as Haggard mumbled something she couldn't quite hear.
"Just a second, LT..."
Cyra almost fell out of her seat when the Mako suddenly leaped forward then stopped abruptly. She could barely keep herself from shouting a curse. Sweetwater showed less restraint.
"Jesus Christ Hags!" The tech yelled. "Are you trying to kill us?"
"I need to get used to the controls." Haggard answered. "Don't worry, I got this."
"Just get us moving, Private. " Cyra ordered, looking at demo-expert's back suspiciously. His reply had sounded somewhat too cheerful. "And I would appreciate it, if the rest of the trip was a little less jerky."
"Sure thing, ma'am." Haggard chuckled as he guided the Mako out of the hangar, slowly increasing speed once outside. From her seat Cyra could see several people running after them, waving wildly.
They gave up soon though. Instead the radio receiver came alive as Haggard slowed down slightly upon entering the forest.
"Bond, what the hell are you doing?" A female voice demanded angrily. "We don't have time for one of your silly stunts! If you don't want to go job-hunting you get your ass back here right now! Do you hear me?"
Haggard resisted the urge to answer with some effort, switching off the radio reluctantly as he focused on guiding the Mako around the trees.